All posts tagged Battleship Potemkin

In 1925 the Russian government, still euphoric at the success of the Bolshevik revolution, commissioned legendary director Sergei Eisenstein to make a film. They chose a mutiny that had taken place twenty years earlier as their subject. In June 1905 the armored Battleship Potemkin was returning home from the Sino-Japanese War, when its starving crewmembers revolted against their officers, killing several and placing the others under arrest. They then sailed into Odessa to join the general strike already underway, flying a red flag. Although this attempt at revolution failed, the Potemkin remained an important symbol. A December 1925 preview screening of Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin” in Moscow elated the group of party officials and veterans invited to attend, and on January 19, 1926, the film premiered publicly to rave reviews.

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